Chapter 431: A Past Entwined by the Four Spirits (6)

WHOOSH!

Yeon Hojeong hurriedly retreated.

“Impressive.”

Smiling, Tamgyeong repeatedly clenched and opened the hand he had thrust forward.

It was completely unharmed. Wrapped in a faint golden radiance, the aged hand somehow looked vast and generous, like the palm of the Buddha himself.

“The Vajra possesses incomparable strength. It shatters rock and tears through iron. Taken to its utmost extreme, there is no evil under heaven that can break through it.”

WHOOOM.

The golden radiance faded, revealing a tiny scratch on Tamgyeong’s palm.

It was barely enough to draw a single drop of blood. Calling it a wound almost seemed absurd.

Yet the fact that Yeon Hojeong had pierced the power of Shaolin’s famed Great Vajra Palm and managed to leave even that tiny mark was extraordinary in itself.

Drip.

Instead, blood ran down Yeon Hojeong’s hand where it gripped the Black Dragon Axe. The impact from striking the Great Vajra Palm had split the webbing between his thumb and forefinger.

The old man’s defense was as hard as steel.

How long had it been since Yeon Hojeong had encountered an opponent whose sheer power injured the hand holding his weapon?

“They say fist and palm are ultimately one, but in my case, I devoted far more effort to palm arts than fist arts. I found the sheer variety in the ways qi could be released fascinating. And yet you pierced the Great Vajra Palm I unleashed and actually wounded me...”

Tamgyeong stepped forward.

THOOM!

It was not even a stamping step, yet the entire clearing seemed to tremble.

“Who is your master?”

Why ask when he clearly had his suspicions?

“You resemble him, yet you are far too different. He wasn’t like this.”

SHING!

Yeon Hojeong drew the White Dragon Axe as well and replied in a flat voice.

“If I knew that, I wouldn’t be standing here.”

“I’ll ask again.”

For an instant, stern authority entered Tamgyeong’s gaze.

“Who is your master? And who are you?”

“You can find out for yourself.”

WHOOSH!

Yeon Hojeong surged forward at terrifying speed and swung both axes with all his might.

Tamgyeong’s eyes gleamed.

The Black Dragon Axe came for his neck.

The White Dragon Axe came for his shoulder.

They were merely small hand axes, yet their weight and sharpness were beyond imagination. Tamgyeong had cultivated the Indestructible Vajra Divine Art, but even he had no intention of trusting the toughness of his body enough to receive those attacks directly.

His hand moved smoothly and knocked aside the Black Dragon Axe.

CLAAANG! CLANG!

The deflected Black Dragon Axe collided with the White Dragon Axe, completely destroying Yeon Hojeong’s posture.

The feat required both frightening power and astonishing perception.

Deflecting the Black Dragon Axe’s cleaving strike with a single sweep of his hand was impressive enough. But in that same instant, Tamgyeong had conceived of redirecting its trajectory into the White Dragon Axe so that the collision would break Yeon Hojeong’s stance as well.

Yet Yeon Hojeong showed no surprise whatsoever.

BANG!

Even with his posture broken in midair, he rotated his body through divine skill in Inner Qi control and lashed out with a kick.

And he did not stop there.

The instant Tamgyeong blocked the kick with his forearm, Yeon Hojeong slipped inside his reach and swung the White Dragon Axe upward.

The angle was exquisite.

He had aimed precisely into a blind spot where evasion, counterattack, and even defense would all be awkward.

But his opponent was Tamgyeong.

A master one step above Yeon Hojeong.

A man who had reached the Limitless Realm and attained complete understanding of the principles of martial arts.

CLANGCLANGCLANGCLANG!

The Avalokitesvara Blue-Steel Hand was astonishingly swift and powerful. Tamgyeong’s hand technique produced dozens of afterimages as it intercepted the White Dragon Axe’s chained cleaving strikes, forming what could only be described as an impregnable wall.

Yeon Hojeong could barely remember the last time he had seen defense this formidable.

It reminded him of the Black Tortoise Art of the Four Spirit Martial Art.

And Tamgyeong was not even using a martial art specialized for defense. He had simply taken an elaborate hand technique and, in the moment, adapted it perfectly for defensive use.

As expected.

Yeon Hojeong’s gaze deepened.

This realm is not easy to overcome.

Limitlessness was the realm in which one had mastered the principles of martial arts so completely that the instant intent arose, qi had already given form to the technique.

Whatever martial art one had learned, if thought moved like lightning, the practitioner’s art moved like lightning as well.

Whether someone attacked a blind spot or forced a weakness into existence, a master of that realm who seriously brought their martial arts to bear possessed defenses of iron that simply would not yield.

But I, too, once stood in that same realm.

If anything, Yeon Hojeong was fortunate that he had not yet climbed higher from where he stood now.

His qi could not yet keep pace with the speed of his intent.

That tiny gap forced him to continuously examine how both he and his opponent would move in the next instant.

Then Yeon Hojeong moved.

PAPAPAPAPAK!

Using almost supernatural footwork to evade Tamgyeong’s counterattack, Yeon Hojeong swung the Black-White Twin Dragon Axes like bolts of lightning.

The assault was vicious enough to seem intent on carving Tamgyeong to pieces.

A wall of cleaving strikes, packed so densely that not even a needle could slip between them, swallowed Tamgyeong’s upper body.

Complete freedom.

Tamgyeong could see it.

The flow formed by Yeon Hojeong’s axes.

How does he produce an attack this refined...?

The chained cleaving strikes curved like crescent moons, completely stripping away every chance to evade or counterattack.

Yeon Hojeong had realized that Tamgyeong could defend against the blows regardless of how they came, so instead he had sealed off every possible avenue of escape from the outset.

Tamgyeong had lost count of how many times the young man had astonished him already.

After seeing an opponent’s response just once, Yeon Hojeong could immediately change the density of his attacks.

His thought process and real-combat instincts were incomparable enough on their own, but even more exceptional was his ability to instantly translate whatever appeared in his mind into martial technique.

Tamgyeong thrust both palms forward.

ROOOOM!

The overwhelming force of the Great Vajra erupted from his twin palms and shattered every cleaving strike of the Black-White Twin Dragons.

BANG!

Yeon Hojeong flew backward to dissipate the impact.

Tamgyeong charged after him—

and suddenly froze in shock.

A pitch-black axe had somehow arrived barely three inches from the space between his brows.

Fast!

Tamgyeong snapped his head aside.

BANG!

Before the Black Dragon Axe had even embedded itself in the ground, Yeon Hojeong’s palm force exploded just in front of Tamgyeong’s chest.

It carried little power, but even Tamgyeong was startled by its speed.

What was that for?

Why detonate the palm force in empty space before his chest instead of striking him directly?

CLATTER!

At that instant, the chilling rasp of metal made Tamgyeong’s eyes shake.

What?!

If Tamgyeong had remained wholly immersed in the martial path all these years—

if, even now, while still favored by the Martial God, he had continued reaching upward not to seek something else but solely to attain a higher realm—

then he might have evaded what Yeon Hojeong had just done.

But he could not.

Even after reaching Limitlessness, Tamgyeong was still human.

Decades without real combat had dulled his instincts considerably.

CLINK-CLINK!

Tamgyeong’s stance became awkward.

“...What is this?”

He looked down at his right foot.

A dark-gray metal chain had wrapped tightly around his ankle.

WHOOSH!

The instant Yeon Hojeong bound one ankle, he moved.

Surprisingly, this was not his usual straight-line advance.

His speed had not diminished in the slightest, but now he curved toward Tamgyeong’s left side with remarkably fluid movement.

There was no time to think through every possibility.

Tamgyeong drove out a powerful palm strike.

That was when—

...!!

The Flood Dragon Chain connected beneath Yeon Hojeong’s sleeve twitched.

There was hardly any force behind it.

Yet that single tug disrupted the path of Tamgyeong’s palm force in mid-strike.

And not by a little.

Instead of tearing toward Yeon Hojeong, the force shot harmlessly high into the distant sky.

Calling it a complete miss would hardly have been an exaggeration.

Merely disrupting the movement of Tamgyeong’s ankle had thrown the entire path of his palm force that far off course.

BANG! BOOM!

Tamgyeong’s body rocked violently.

At such close range, he had failed to properly redirect Yeon Hojeong’s Tiger King’s Nine-Cleaving Stance.

From that moment onward, Yeon Hojeong’s merciless assault began.

BOOMBOOMBOOM! BOBOBOOM!

His attacks were astonishing.

He seemed to follow the fundamental path of the Tiger King’s Nine-Cleaving Stance, yet shifted freely between techniques as he drove Tamgyeong backward.

Tamgyeong used lightning-fast True Qi control to defend against Yeon Hojeong’s attacks, but even that left him hard-pressed.

At every crucial instant, the Flood Dragon Chain snapped taut and disrupted the degree and direction of his qi release.

Good heavens!

PAPAPAPAPANG!

Hurriedly batting aside Yeon Hojeong’s attacks, Tamgyeong could only marvel inwardly.

Don’t tell me he read it?

Tamgyeong violently kicked his right foot backward.

WHOOOM!

Yeon Hojeong seemed about to be dragged after it—

then instead unleashed a savage punch.

BANG!

Tamgyeong’s body shuddered and was driven backward.

The shockwave was so powerful that even after crossing both arms to block, he had to retreat more than ten steps.

At his true ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) level, he should never have been pushed back so far.

No.

Under ordinary circumstances, he would never even have needed to block such a brutally straightforward punch in the first place.

I see. He did read it.

Tamgyeong’s pupils widened.

My right foot. He really did figure it out.

FLASH! CLAAANG!

The White Dragon Axe shot out like lightning and struck the taut Flood Dragon Chain.

A sharp pain immediately stabbed through Tamgyeong’s right foot.

The hidden force released from the White Dragon Axe had traveled through the Flood Dragon Chain and compressed the nerves in his ankle.

FWOOSH!

At that moment, Vermilion Bird Fire Qi blazed in Yeon Hojeong’s eyes.

Crimson Fire energy simultaneously gathered in his hand, forming wings of flame.

BOOOOM!

The ground behind Tamgyeong exploded across a radius of thirty feet, sending a towering blaze into the air.

Tamgyeong remained standing calmly.

He had neither redirected nor evaded the attack.

Yeon Hojeong had sent the palm force that had nearly struck Tamgyeong straight through him and detonated it behind his body instead.

Yeon Hojeong still stood with one hand extended.

His palm had stopped half a foot from Tamgyeong’s chest.

“Remarkable.”

Tamgyeong did not bother concealing his amazement.

“I’ve seen countless masters in my life, but never anyone who could apply Striking the Ox Across a Mountain with such refinement. Your martial arts truly have no business belonging to someone your age.”

Striking the Ox Across a Mountain was one of the highest martial principles: transmitting force past a fixed object to strike something behind it.

Many people knew how to perform it in principle.

Very few could integrate it into real combat.

That was not simply a question of realm.

It was a question of application and instinct.

This young man possessed both.

His ability to take the martial arts he had learned and understood and apply them in actual combat was virtually unmatched.

“But tell me. How did you know? About my right foot.”

“I figured it out after we clashed three times.”

“Three times... Hahaha!”

Tamgyeong tilted his head toward the sky and laughed.

“After only three exchanges, you realized that my martial arts revolve around stamping with my right foot and rotating through my right leg?”

Several decades ago, Tamgyeong had badly injured his left foot.

He had been so relentlessly busy at the time that he had treated it only superficially and moved on.

But age eventually brought consequences.

Walking and running posed no problem, yet many of the blood points leading through his left ankle had narrowed considerably.

Even physicians knew of no solution.

They told him the only thing he could do was continually practice qi circulation and breath regulation in hopes of widening them.

Tamgyeong had simply left the condition as it was.

After all, he was no longer living as a martial artist.

The consequence, however, was that burdens his two feet should have shared were now borne almost entirely by his right.

And Yeon Hojeong had seen it.

All of Tamgyeong’s martial arts began from his right foot.

“I only noticed so quickly because we’ve spent several days together. If you’d fought me seriously from the first exchange, I never would have caught you.”

“Whether I was serious or careless, a result is still a result.”

Tamgyeong smiled.

“I lost.”

“There’s no point deciding victory or defeat—”

“And now I can finally be certain.”

“...?”

“You are not his disciple.”